


Nobody But Me

by Wallwalker



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Community: bucketlist, Community: kink_bingo, Established Relationship, F/M, Injury, No Idea About Timelines, Service, Sleepy Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-27
Updated: 2012-04-27
Packaged: 2017-11-04 09:58:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/392563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wallwalker/pseuds/Wallwalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kismeses make better nurses than most humans might expect. It doesn't do to let your rival get killed, at least not by someone who isn't you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nobody But Me

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [bite and scratch and scream all night](https://archiveofourown.org/works/317760) by [Laylah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah). 



Your name is Nepeta Leijon, and you currently have no idea where you are. All you know is that you're floating somewhere warm, and something is moving gently across your naked body, washing you clean. 

It's nice at first - you think you're dreaming, an old dream when you were just barely older than a grub and Pounce is washing you. It makes you feel good. Safe. Slowly, you open your eyes, expecting to find that you're in your cave, that Pounce is cuddled up to you, that the entire hunt was just a bad dream and you were home all along. You feel yourself start purring, or as close to a purr as you can get with your troll throat - you'll have to find a way to do it better, someday - and just lie there, relaxed. You always liked a good bathing. You always feel so warm and clean afterwards, and it's pretty much the best feeling ever.

You open your eyes and nothing happens. Nothing. Not even a twitch. 

You keep trying as the hands keep bathing you, avoiding the places where it hurts, scrubbing off whatever it is that's sticking to your skin. You can't really remember anything - you're not sure what happened at all! Some kind of accident with one of Equius's machines that knocked you out, maybe? Or did you and Terezi go a little bit too far with the roleplay again? She's going to be so mad, if that's it - you'd promised you'd be careful!

You'd grit your teeth if you could, but that's not working either. Instead you just keep trying to open your eyes, as hard as you can. You've got to see what's going on!

It takes what feels like a long time, but finally you force them open, expecting to see a jumbled pile of roboti% parts, or a scattering of plush scalemates or whatever. Instead you see... moonlight? Stars? Are you in a hive at all? 

You can't lift your head, and everything you can see from inside of the thing you're in is kind of blurry. You can tell you're in something that's made of wood, you're pretty sure, and the water is warm and soapy. 

Then something comes into your vision. Something purple and stripey - 

Wait. You'd know those stupid pants anywhere. _Eridan?_

You try to yowl and scratch out of sheer shock, but then you realize you can't - your body's limp, like a wet noodle, and all that comes out of your mouth is a weak little mew. It's enough to get his attention, though, and he turns to look at you. "Huh," he said, momentarily surprised. "Didn't think you'd wake up so fast."

 _You poisoned me, you pawful little sea-slug,_ you want to say - he hates being called a sea-slug! - but you end up with a moan. Your body won't react to what your mind wants it to do; it's too tired, too limp. It's just so horrible!

Something of your meaning must've come through, anyway, because Eridan rolls his eyes and sighs wearily. "No, I didn't poison you, Nep," he said. "Drugged you, if anythin. You'll be fine in a few hours. I couldn't very well take care a you if I thought you were gonna snatch off my glasses an scratch my eyes out soon as you woke up, could I?"

Take care of you? What's he even talking about? You still don't remember anything!

You're still frozen, but at least you can still move your eyes. You glare at him - you don't like it, don't like being treated like this, not without your say-so. You mean, you're not so upset that you're naked - he's your kismesis, not like he hasn't seen it before - but you'd never been drugged before and you don't think you very much like it.

He kept talking, of course. You've never known him to _stop_ talking, not without having something shoved in his mouth - and it's worse now that he has you as a captive audience. You'll have to get him back later, you think through the fog in your brain. Make him earn every minute you had to listen to his stupid burbling accent. "I was really hopin you'd stay under. Gotta disinfect the wounds, and it's gonna hurt." He picked up another rag, dipped it in another of his seashell-bowls. "I need to get it done with, though, or else they'll fester and it'll give you a really bad fever. So, um, I'll make it quick and I guess you oughta be ready bout now."

You can't help it. You cringe, inwardly at least, as he starts to drip the stuff onto your arms. At first, you guess, it's not so bad - kind of cold, sure, but nothing you can't handle. It might bug him, but he's a big wuss when it comes to stuff like this anyway, he's got no tolerance for pain at all - 

Then the burning starts, and you would thrash around and claw his stupid face and run if you could, but your stupid body still won't respond to what your brain tells it to do, and all you can do is make tiny pathetic mewing noises as he methodically cleans the wounds. You're bleeding a little, and soon his gloved hands are stained with olive-green, but he doesn't look nearly as satisfied as he usually does when he makes you bleed. He just looks like he's concentrating really hard, the way he probably looks when he's doing something real important. 

"There," he finally says. "That's done. Doubt you'll need any stitchin up at least. I'll wrap this up and then you need to sleep." He has more rags - no, they're bandages, you realize, as he starts dressing the cuts, applying pressure to stop the bleeding. You wonder, for a second, just what he's had to do to make him so good at this. It's like he's had to do this a bunch of times before. It's nothing like being taken care of by Pounce, or even by Authour the few times that you were spending time with Equius and one of his machines went haywire - Arthour's hands were so much more gentle, he was so much more worried about not hurting you any further. Eridan doesn't seem to be worried; he's firm with his hands, like he wants to get the job done and get it done right, and if it hurts you a little bit, whatever, at least you'll be better later and you can yell at him about it then. 

"Okay. That should hold," he mutters as he reaches under you and lifts you up, out of the tub. He rests you on top of a towel and dries you off, very careful around the wounds, which he's wrapped first in bandages and later in something you don't recognize, some kind of rubbery seaweed. He makes sure you're completely dry, looks you over a few times with this intense concentration, like he's scared he's missed something. "Let's get you down below before the sun rises."

You open your mouth again as he's carrying you over his shoulder, down the stairs and below the deck of his nasty old ship. It takes a while, but you work at it, and eventually you manage to shape a word. "W-why?" you manage to drawl at least, or at least something that sounds enough like it that you think you'll get the message.

He laughs sharply as he sets you carefully in a tank of what looks like newly-mixed sopor - and it's nice sopor, even if it does smell an awful lot like seawater - and tightens the opening so that your floppy neck can't let your head fall forward into the slime and maybe make you drown yourself. "Don't be a stupid wriggler," he says. "I'm not lettin anythin out there get you, Nep. Nobody gets to do that - nobody but me." He shuts you in, and you know on some level that it's so that you won't fall out like a dead fish, but it still would've raised your hackles if you'd been able to move them. "Now get some sleep."

You can't help it - you're already going under as he's stomping off, muttering something under his breath that you don't catch. It doesn't feel like much time has passed at all when you open your eyes, except that the darkened glass on the other side of the porthole in the room is still pretty bright. You're sure it's midday, and you're still tired, but you need to try to remember. You hadn't planned to visit anyone at all that night. Had you? You were cranky, but not in a really good way, and you'd just wanted to take out some frustrations, attack a musclebeast or two....

Oh. Yeah. You did do that, didn't you? Flashes of memory, an angry mother musclebeast not happy that you were stalking its cub - how were you supposed to know it was a cub? It was big enough to be an adult! Claws tearing at your arms and your chest and throwing you around, and then a bright light, and then....

And then....

Huh. Either you're too tired, or that sopor is way too strong. You can't help it; you drift off again in mid-memory. 

\---

When you come back to full consciousness again, you realize that you're being carried. Experimentally, you try to kick your legs and claw at the air around you, and you get a few twitches for your trouble, but that's about it. 

"Dammit, Nep, come on." Eridan just sounds tired now. Tired, and maybe a little worried. "Can you just fuckin hold still?"

"What's going on?" you say, or try to say. It comes out incredibly slurred.

"If you'd stop harpin on that and clam up, I'll tell you, but not til we get to the table. You're pretty damn heavy."

"Mph," you say eloquently. It's called muscle, you think, and if he'd actually go out and do anything on his own instead of relying on his stupid drones and seahorses, he might know what it was.

"Alright. Here." He puts you down into a chair, and then covers you over with an ancient blanket. And you've gotta admit, you're glad for the blanket, considering that all you're wearing are a few ragged old undergarments that he must've put on you when you woke up."Don't want you to fall out. So you remember any a last night at all?"

"I was... hunting," you say, blearily. Your mouth works now, at least. The rest of you still isn't great. "Alone."

"Yeah. Sort of." He smirked a bit. "Watched the whole thing. I was gonna surprise ya once you got a big catch, see what the fuss was about. An then that fuckin huge beast almost got you before I could get the Crosshairs warmed up. Real smart, by the way, makin a monster like that mad -"

"You followed me?" you repeat, trying to glare at him.

He smacks his forehead with his hand. _"Yes._ Welcome to the _conversation,_ " he says. "Look, you're a mess, okay? Worst of it's taken care of. But that stuff I drugged you with is gonna last a while longer, an anyway I gotta keep you here for a few more hours an make sure it's not gonna get worse, so if you could maybe ease up a the inane shit and try to act like a fuckin adult, I'd appreciate it."

"You want me to act like an adult?" you repeat, as best you can. "You're the one who was stalking me!"

"You would a done the same," he snaps back, and turns away. 

He's probably right. Doesn't make you any less angry.

You two don't talk as he starts doing something at his wood stove, something involving a tea kettle, then goes up and down some stairs and starts doing something with a sharp knife and some other things you can't see. He's obviously busy, and you don't really feel like talking more than you have to anyway. All you've got to keep you company is the slightly ratty blanket that's laying over your shoulders; you grab it and knead at it, fingers clutching and unclutching. It doesn't feel like any pelt you've ever felt, and it defintiely doesn't feel anything like Pounce's soft belly - you can't tell what it's made of, something oddly fibrous that you don't recognize. Not like any yarn you've ever played with. Still, it's old and soft and it feels good when you knead it, and it reminds you that you're still a furoceous pouncebeast who still has claws and could scratch if you wanted to, and that helps. Maybe it's weird to still pretend like that, but you don't care - it helps, and right now you're in a situation that feels weird enough that you need it, so you keep going.

He must've noticed you doing it as he was making his tea, because you hear him sigh. "Don't you dare destroy that blanket," he says, but not in the usual snotty way that you just ignore to make him angry. That one actually sounds serious. 

You're curious about that, until you look down at the blanket - you really hadn't done that yet - and notice the pattern of tyrian-purple diamonds around the hem. That really IS an old blanket, isn't it? "Fine," you grump, and you start kneading a little more carefully. It feels weird, not using your claws so much, but you know a boundary when you trip over one.

The kettle whistles after a few minutes. "Okay," Eridan says, "finally. Tea's gonna be ready soon."

"What kind of tea?" you ask, curious in spite of yourself.

"Good tea," he says dismissively. "Nothin _you_ ever coulda had before."

You scowl. "Like I care about tea anyway." Which isn't really true, because you do like tea but it's got to be made right, and you're pretty sure Eridan isn't going to do it properly.

"Yeah, an I hate wasting this on someone who obviously won't appreciate it," he shoots back as he pours the water into something else. It's all so ridiculous and fancy! "But you're hurt pretty bad and this'll help, so you might as well stop complainin an drink it."

"Fine. Just give me a cup already!"

"Oh, no," he says, and a trace of a smirk shows up on his face as he turns around. "Don't get me wrong - It'd be hilarious watching you flounder around with those limp seaweed arms a yours. Doesn't mean I wanna watch you spill _my_ best tea all over _my_ blanket." He puts the teapot and cups on the table, just out of your reach, then turns around and grabs something else off of the counter, back where you couldn't see - it looks a little like a tray, covered in little pieces of cut-up fish. Your mouth starts to water - you didn't realize how hungry you were! "You want any a this, then you'll just have to be good and let me give it to you."

"I don't need you to feed me!" you protest. "I don't even need my hands -"

"Not in MY hive." He sits down next to you - the tray is still out of your reach, damn him - and starts picking up the teacups and pouring. "Now calm down and have a taste a some tea. Probably won't be sweet enough for you since you're an unrefined landdwellin wriggler, but -"

"Oh, just shut _up,_ you pawful jerk," you snap. "Just let me drink your stupid tea already!" 

He smirks. "I would recommend sippin it like a civilized troll," he said primly, "and not tryin to lap it up. It's very hot."

You glare at him under your eyebrows - you're not stupid - and put your lips gently up to the teacup, half-expecting him to tip the hot fluid into your face all at once. He doesn't, though - he's really very careful, watching you closely to make sure that too much of the burning hot stuff doesn't slosh out of the cup and onto your nose. It's not bad tea - it smells nice, if a bit weird and still a tiny bit salty, and really it's too hot to taste, which is why you never got the point of really hot tea in the first place. What's the point of drinking something if you can't taste it? You really like it a lot better once it's had lots of those little cubes in it, and some musclebeast milk - Arthour makes the _best_ tea ever!

The warmth does seem to help, though, more than anything else - you can feel it spreading through your body, pushed along with your blood, and you feel a little like you're floating. "What is this stuff?" you ask, when he pulls the cup away. "Seriously, what's in it?"

He puts the cup down and shrugs. "A buncha things," he says. "Mostly seaweed and stuff that's been wwashed and dried out. It's good for convalesin, is the important part - they save it for nobility, most a the time, so I hope you appreciate what you're gettin." He picks up the tray of fish and a fork that looks suspiciously like a trident and spears a piece of the fish, and your stomach starts growling all over again. "I'll give you more in a bit. First you need some food."

You're not even going to bother arguing with that. You feel like you could pounce on that stuff and eat all of it at once, as hungry as you are - you're not too happy with the way he's feeding you, one tiny piece at a time. 

Then again, as delicious it is you think you might die if you tried to eat too much of it. It's seriously the most delicious thing you've ever tasted, and you've tasted a lot of fantastic things! You've always said that the stuff you hunt yourself is the best, and you're kind of mad because you definitely didn't hunt this - Eridan made it, and now you can't have any unless he gives it to you, and he knows it. You half-expect him to start playing with the food after a while, but he doesn't - he just keeps giving you bites of the delicious seafood that you're just eating up, and it's so amazing and delicious that you wouldn't care if he started playing with you! You'd just eat it anyway. He's being nice now, probably because he's still pawfully worried about you - and making him worry does feel kind of good, you won't deny it! - but it's in his eyes, the thought that you're completely at his mercy.

Then again, he's kind of giving you everything and being okay with it, too. You'll have to remind him of that later, maybe after one of your fights - you can only imagine how he'll squirm if you can make him do this again. 

You actually feel... pretty good? Comfortable, warm, taken care of. Almost like you'd feel if it were your lusus who was taking care of you, snuggled up against you with that soft, warm fur, purring deeply against your back. It's not the same, of course - Eridan doesn't purr, the very thought of him purring is utterly ridiculous, and anyway he's still pretty snarly and cranky even while he's stroking the back of your neck and offering you another piece of that absolutely delicious fish. But it feels nice. You feel almost... safe, there. 

And you hate that, _so_ much! You're not supposed to feel safe with your kismesis. Safe is pretty much exactly the opposite of what you're supposed to feel, isn't it? You know it, maybe not from experience but at least from lots and lots of research, and yet he can still make you feel this way, and it's so unfair and irritating and if your arms weren't still tired and shaky you'd scratch him for doing it. But they are, and you're in no condition for a fight anyway, so you just grit your teeth (until he offers you another piece of fish, because you don't care how mad you are, that fish is absolutely purr-fect) and sit through it.

He looks so smug, too. And there's part of you that says well, duh, he always looks smug, but you don't think it's just that. He's an idiot, but he's not stupid; he can figure stuff like this out pretty easily, and you know it, and you're kind of glad because you'd hate to have to explain it to him.

"There," he says, when you take the last sip of the rapidly cooling tea - it is salty, and tastes a little bit bitter, now that you can taste some of it. "Looks like you're starting to get better. Bet you're still tired, though."

"No I'm not," you protest, then ruin it by yawning.

"Thought so." He shakes his head. "I don't _get_ you sometimes, Nep."

"You're not suppawsed to," you say, and you're not too happy with how it sounds, but he doesn't seem to care. He's already pulling the blanket aside and untying the knots. You want to help, but you can still only get your hands to move a little bit, and he ends up doing most of the work. 

"Hmph." He's carrying you again, over his shoulder like a sack of catnip, and you'd be mad about it if you weren't so full. As it is, you're fighting back the urge to purr. Stupid considerate kismesis. "C'mon. I don't know about you, but I'm still tired. And you need time to let that stuff wear off."

This time, after he puts you into the sopor, he doesn't secure you. He strips himself down to his own underpants and climbs in next to you before he sets the locking device, and by then you're too wrapped up in the heady warmth of the stuff to really object when he curls up to your back and wraps his arms around your waist, carefully avoiding the bandages. He's cool, but the sopor is warm, and anyway you're okay with not being alone right now.

\---

You have no idea when it is that you wake up. The room is still fairly bright, but for all you know that's just the lighting; a lot of trolls like their respiteblocks to be brighter during the day, so that they can tell what time it is when they wake up in midday without opening a window. Opening a window at midday can be downright hazardous to your health, if you're a troll.

You do know, however, that you're still half-asleep, and that you don't have Eridan curled up against your back anymore. You must've switched position during the day, and now the two of you are awkwardly smooshed together, stomach to stomach. The wounds are aching, but only a little. You have enough room to pull away a bit, if you want to.

You don't. You're just so... okay, you're grateful that he helped you. But you're pretty mad, too! You're mad that he, of all people, had to save your life, and you're mad that he was following you in the first place and had to see you wipe out like that. You're even mad that he gave you all of that delicious food and that tea that made you feel so much better, and you're mad that he just sat there and gave all of it to you, that he washed you and helped you out and all he did was give you that smug little smile.

You're mad enough that you try to move your arms, and they do move, if not very well. You're still shaky, but you do manage to get your claws to bear enough that you manage to get them to dig into his side, hard enough to make him gasp.

You're not sure he was awake before, but he is now. "Huh?" 

You don't say anything - you just nip at his shoulder. This might be an incredibly bad idea, but you don't care. You're so mad at him right now, and you've just got to do something -

"Mrph. Nep. What are you doin?" He winces a bit. "I could fuckin hurt you -"

"So what?" you mutter, still fuzzy from sleep. "I could hurt you more."

"Nep," he says, but then you wrap your arm around him as best you can and squeeze, and when he gasps you draw him in for a kiss and bite him hard on the lip. 

He seems to get it then, and he squeezes back and runs his claws down the uninjured part of your back, not hard enough to draw blood - just enough to hurt, and it stings a bit. The really bad wounds are still wrapped up, and you're feeling better, but he's absolutely right - he could seriously hurt you if he wanted to. Which is just another reason why you're not backing down, because if you backed down just because he _could_ do something, he'd never get the chance to actually do anything!

It doesn't take long for you both to get rid of those ridiculous undergarments - you shred his, your claws against the side of his hip, and he snarls as you push too hard but he doesn't complain. Yours he takes off more carefully, pulls them down enough to keep them around your ankles where you just don't have the room to kick them off, and you're too tired to do much about it. You don't really care, anyway - as soon as it's free your bulge is immediately curling against his, thinner tendrils twining with his thicker ones. His is going straight into your nook, pushing the seedflap aside pretty roughly, and it hurts - it's always like he's trying to stab you with a harpoon, sharp and fierce and yet somehow it feels so completely amazing that you never complain about being sore afterwards! Not that you'd complain to him, anyway. 

You can't really push back as much as you might want to, anyway, not with his stupid jellyfish poison or whatever still in your bloodstream. But you try, and you manage to get his legs all tangled up in yours, and that helps. Soon you've got everything that you can wrap around him wrapped hard around him, and you can feel as you hit a sensitive place in his nook as you worm you way in deeper - that really sensitive one, the one that makes him make those pathetic gasping noises and then grit his teeth like he's ashamed of having made them, and you know he'd rather you stop so that he wouldn't have to admit how good it feels! 

He's not as rough as he has been before, but he's rough enough, and anyway you figure you can be angry enough for both of you! So you claw and bite at him as much as you can manage, and he nips at your lips and your neck and digs his claws into your lower back and tries to be careful with the dressings. You can taste blood, his salty violet blood, you can taste it coating your _tongue -_

It doesn't take long after that; You've been simmering with anger long enough that you really, really _wanted_ to let it out. You guess he must've wanted the same, because as soon as you finish so does he, and the two of you are hissing and gasping at each other and holding on until the shaking subsides. It does hurt, although not as much as you expected, but the pain fades away soon enough; soon you're empty and exhausted again, and he's gasping for breath as if he's forgotten how to breathe air after that.

"Great," he gasps after a few seconds, "it'll take forever for the scrubbers to deal with this mess."

You laugh quietly. You can hear them working already, filtering the genetic material out into something that can actually be put into a filial pail, and you know he can too; it's just the sort of stupid stuff he would worry about. "Serves you right, sea-slug," you say, turning your back to him.

"Hmph. Useless wriggler. I'm going to destroy you someday." He's still holding you, though, curled up nice and tight. "Get some fuckin sleep."

You don't argue that time. It sounds like a really good idea. Privately - and you mean privately, because you're not going to admit it to him, not for the world - you figure that him following you always means that stuff like this happens, it might not be so bad. Although you'd have to turn the tables on him once in a while, too, or else it just wouldn't be fun, right?

Maybe you can talk your meowrail into finding a way that you can breathe underwater so that you can stalk him down _there,_ where he'd least expect it! That would be pretty nice. You'll have to bug him about it, when you get back....

You're still all tangled up together when you fall asleep again.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Bucketlist ([Service prompt](http://bucketlist.dreamwidth.org/1136.html?thread=74352#cmt74352)) and also for a minicard for the Kink Bingo April 2012 minichallenge ([Warm Blanket](http://kink-bingo.dreamwidth.org/406055.html#cutid40)).


End file.
